[TIN092] Announcement

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello everyone,

The first event in the course is the first lecture, on September 4th, at 10:00, room HA3.

Before then, make sure to follow the directions at the top of the course website (in particular, make sure to grab the book, and try the quiz).

Welcome to the course!.

Kind regards,

Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hi students,

In case you are wondering which edition of the course book you can use for the course, then we have updated the section on the course website with details on this matter.

  http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/#coursebook

In short, all editions of the book are valid; their content is the same. If you do find an edition of the book which we have not listed, however, then let me know, and I will look into it, just in case.

All the best,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello everyone,

The Google Calendar for the course is now up. Subscription is open, and URLs for this are now on the course website.

Kind regards,

Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello everyone,

Assignment 1 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Preliminaries".

All the best,

Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

The Fire submission system is now up. The URL to the submission system is

https://fire.cs.chalmers.se:8005/cgi-bin/Fire

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Students,

The notes from exercise session 1 are now online. They are embedded in the schedule, under today's exercise session event. Here is a direct URL:

http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/e1/e1.pdf

Best regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

Today we have four announcements in one!

1) Thanks to reports from students, we have fixed a few typos and broken links, none of which were serious (in assignment 1: i1,...,i5, missing "_Algorithms_LP1" in an URL, the unnecessary URL to permutations). Since we keep improving this course from year to year, bugs of this nature are bound to creep up. If you suspect a bug, don't hesitate to report it to me. We greatly appreciate it.

2) A few students are having difficulties locating course material on the course website. In case you are one of them, then we have prepared a screencast demonstrating how to find course material. It is located at

  http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/howto.ogv

3) A student pointed out to me that students in the "Algorithms, Languages and Logic" master program have an exercise session in the "Logic in Computer Science" course during the consultation hour slot. I will look into rescheduling the weekly consultation hour (we will try to keep it on Fridays), and announce the new time in 2-3 days.

4) Assignment 2 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Greedy Algorithms".

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello,

A student just notified me that the Fire submission system was behaving strangely; that the screen went blank after he uploaded a file. If you are experiencing this behaviour, then rest assured that your file is still uploaded; you just need to login again and complete your submission.

So, if you are having this issue, here is the sequence of actions you have to perform to submit a solution to, say, A1P1.

login -> A1P1 -> add file -> upload file -> *blank*
login -> A1P1 -> (*) submit -> (**) submit

(*) : You should at this point download and inspect the file you uploaded to the Fire system, to ensure that it is the right file.
(**) : You need to do that final submit; otherwise, your submission is not sent to a grader.

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello again,

You guys may find the next episode of "Vetenskapens Värld" of interest, given what we have covered in the course so far. The episode covers matchmaking algorithms used on internet dating websites :-) The episode is tomorrow (Monday) at 20:00, on SVT (Swedish television).

  http://www.svt.se/vetenskapens-varld/

From the page:

  Vetenskapens Värld
  Nästa program
  Avsnitt 21
  SVT2 imorgon 20.00

  Del 3 av 18. Letar du efter kärleken? Skulle du kunna tänka dig ta
  hjälp av vetenskapen för att hitta den rätta? Många
  nätdatingsföretag erbjuder idag vetenskaplig matchning för att
  hjälpa dig. Vetenskapens värld synar hur vetenskapliga de här testen
  egentligen är.

Cheers,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

We have looked into which alternative time slots for the "Friday Consulation Hour" conflict least with the schedules of our students, and found that 15:00 to 16:00 is most suitable. All future consultation hours (including the one now on Friday) are moved from their original morning time to this new time.

If this change conflicts with your schedule, then get in touch with me. If a substantial number of students is unable to make use of a consultation in this new time slot, then we will consider rescheduling again.

Kind regards,
Willard.

On Sunday, September 8, 2013 7:57:10 PM UTC+2, Willard Rafnsson wrote:

[...]

3) A student pointed out to me that students in the "Algorithms, Languages and Logic" master program have an exercise session in the "Logic in Computer Science" course during the consultation hour slot. I will look into rescheduling the weekly consultation hour (we will try to keep it on Fridays), and announce the new time in 2-3 days.

[...]

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hi students,

Two announcements.

1) if the Fire system is not working properly when you try to submit your assignment, then it may be because we are performing maintenance on it. Wait 5 minutes, and try submitting again. If you still experience problems, contact the Fireman.

2) Assignment 3 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Dynamic Programming".

All the best,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

Three quick announcements today.

1) The maintainer of the Fire system has taken a look at our Fire system and fixed some of the frustrating features it was exhibiting. Its use should be more hassle-free now. If you encounter any more bugs in it, then do not hesitate to notify me.

2) The exercise session notes for greedy algorithms (as well as for dynamic programming) are embedded in the schedule.

3) Assignment 4 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Dynamic Programming".

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

A typo:

On Sunday, September 22, 2013 5:15:08 PM UTC+2, Willard Rafnsson wrote:

3) Assignment 4 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Dynamic Programming".

I of course meant "Divide and Conquer".

-Willard

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hi students,

As some of you may know, some suggestions have come up for how to cover more material during the lectures in TIN092, Algorithms.

To find out which options most students prefer, we have put together a poll which we would like you to fill in. It can be found here:

  http://www.doodle.com/g9dsy9ewn5qkuu8f

Details and directions are contained within the poll.

Kind regards,
Willard Rafnsson, and Daniel Toom (student representative)

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

Two announcements.

1) Assignment 5 is now up. It is embedded in the schedule, under "Network Flows".

2) A reminder about the Doodle poll on how to cover more material in the course; please state your preference by Wednesday this week. Doing this takes only 1 minute.

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Dear students,

We have three announcements for you today.

1) The poll is now closed. Here are the results:

Prefer revisiting course topics over invited talks in last week?
 Yes   : ~3/5
 (Yes) : ~1/5
 No    : ~1/5

Add more lecture slots at the end of the course?
 Yes   : ~2/4
 (Yes) : ~1/4
 No    : ~1/4

Go through material faster in lectures?
 Yes   : ~1/4
 (Yes) : ~1/4
 No    : ~2/4

Based on these votes, we have decided on the following:

*) The pace of the lectures will remain the same.
*) Lectures in the "Extras & Review" week will be devoted to revisiting course topics.
*) We will look into adding lecture slots in the week after the "Extras & Review" week.

To those who voted, thank you for contributing to maintaining the quality of the course.

2) Chien-Chung told me that some students mentioned in class that they were not receiving course announcements. If you know one of these people, please ask them to send me an e-mail; I would like to see if this is caused by some kind of misconfiguration of the Google Group. Tell them to manually check https://groups.google.com/d/forum/tin092 in the mean time.

3) Notes for the network flows exercise session are now online. They are embedded in the schedule.

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hi students,

A quick clarification about assignment 5 problem 2, since a few students have asked us about this already: it is acceptable to provide a solution which has pseudo-polynomial running time (in contrast to one which has a polynomial running time).

All the best,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

Instead of waiting indefinitely for the Chalmers remote servers to come back online, I have put Assignment 6 on my own server. You will find the assignment at

  https://willard.madscience.dk/a6/

The links in the schedule will function after the Chalmers remove servers are back online.

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

We have now finished all six course themes, and therefore, the whole course curriculum! There will therefore be no new material presented in lectures. So, what happens next?

Extras & Review week:
---------------------

Next week is the "Extras & Review" week. By popular demand, the whole week will be spent reviewing course material. Our tour guide through course themes will be old exams; in each of the two lectures next week, the full solution to an old exam will be presented and motivated, with references to material covered in the course.

The exercise session next week will focus on course themes which students find challenging. For this to be effective, we would like you to pick which of the six course themes you would like to receive most attention in the exercise session. The TA supervising the exercise session will then pick the ~2 most popular themes, recap them, clarify misconception through Q&A, and solve problems on the board. Cast your vote here:

  http://www.doodle.com/ewrpbp6ce4fzii86

Exam week:
----------

All the material we intended to cover in the course has been covered in lectures. Since the exam does not test any new skills which were not taught in lectures, we feel that the one full week of review is sufficient time to thoroughly cover the whole curriculum. We will therefore instead do two things in the exam week:

*) As you near the exam, you will undoubtedly have questions we can clarify. We will therefore have an extended consultation hour late in the exam week (exact time to be announced).

*) If there is enough interest, we will organize an invited speaker session early in the exam week. If you would like to attend such a session, please e-mail Willard by Wednesday 2013-10-16.

Announcements:
--------------

Finally, we have three announcements.

1) Some of the slides relating to the theme of this week were missing in the schedule. This has been fixed now.

2) Notes for the NP-completeness exercise session are now online. They are embedded in the schedule.

3) In case you had difficulties finding a62sup.pdf after clicking the URL given in a62.pdf, I have now fixed the URL. File a62sup.pdf was stored alongside a62.pdf all along, in the Assignment 6 web directory, in these two locations:

https://willard.madscience.dk/a6/
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/a6/

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Dear students,

We hope you are well on your way preparing for the exam by reviewing material and practising on the old exams, and that things are going smoothly.

Today we have two announcements.

1) The final consultation session before the exam is on Wednesday, 2013-10-23, from 12:30 to 14:30 (event added to the schedule). The consultation will be managed by Olof.

If you want quick, detailed help, during consultation, then please send your questions to Olof by e-mail before Tuesday (tomorrow) 2013-10-22 at 13:15. Olof will prioritize helping students who sent questions in advance.

Why do we ask for questions in advance? As you may have experienced, when you approach us in person with a very specific question for a topic we are unprepared for, it can take us a while to come up with a qualified answer. This is especially the case now, since the scope of questions is the whole curriculum (not just a course theme). We ask for questions in advance in the interest of time; we want to help as many students as possible in the time we are given.

2) There will be no invited speaker this time around, due to lack of interest (we only received 3 notifications of interest). For those of you interested in talks in general, you may want to subscribe to some of the mailing lists associated with CSE, or keep an eye on some of the CSE wiki pages.

All the best,
Willard.

[Devdatt Dubhashi]

And here is one more: there is an interesting course being offered in LP2:
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~chrdimi/teaching/optimal_decisions/index.html

Maybe you'd like to check it out! Especially those of you interested in machine learning type of areas.

---

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Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 12:59 PM
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Subject: Re: [TIN092] Announcement

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[Willard Rafnsson]

Dear students,

Some of you have approached us with questions concerning which aids are permitted in the exam, and why. In case you find yourself in doubt, we bring your attention to this part of the course website:

  Exam aids: "anything on print is permitted, which includes textbook, slides, exercise session notes, student's personal notes, old exams, and so on"

This means the exam is open book. In fact, you can bring anything on paper to the exam.

The rationale for having the exam open book: We are not testing your ability to memorize text; we are testing your ability to apply the skills taught in the course to solve problems.

Since we are testing you, we do not permit communication between you and anyone during the exam. This is why we do not permit electronic aids; it is too hard to ensure that an electronic device is incapable of electronic communication.

We wish you all good luck on the exam.

Kind regards,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello students,

Two announcements today:

1) We have now received the exam submissions from administration, and have started grading them. There were 98 submissions, so it's quite the pile. We are grading as fast as we can, but since we have other duties, it might take as much as 10 working days to grade the exam submissions, which puts the expected grading completion time at the end of week 46 (2013-11-15). Once your submissions are graded and available for your scrutinization in the CSE student office, we will send out an announcement.

2) There is an interesting talk on machine learning applications to natural language processing being given in CLT tomorrow. Title, abstract and time (in a .ics calendar event file) given at the following URL:

  http://clt.gu.se/seminar/2013-10-31/clt-seminar-mikael-kageback

All the best,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Dear students,

The exam and its solution is now available on the course website:

  http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/#evaluation_sampleexams

All the best,
Willard.

[Willard Rafnsson]

Hello everyone,

The form for the exam review is now on the course website, in the description of the exam review process:

  http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TIN092_Algorithms_LP1/#evaluation_examreview

If you decide you want to query the grading of your exam submission, then do not remove your exam submission from the student office. By 2013-11-18, follow the directions given in the URL above.

In case you have difficulties finding the CSE student office, then here is its location and opening hours:

  http://www.chalmers.se/cse/EN/contact/cse-student-office

It has been a pleasure for all of us teaching this course to you, and we hope taking this course has been a pleasure for you, too.

Kind regards,
Willard.